”The Unholy Alliance”

In America we have two methods for redress of grievances. The first is through our vote. The second is our courts. It now appears that both are slipping away.

Let’s begin with our vote. 

To strengthen the Democratic brand that was badly tarnished by the embarrassing defeat of George McGovern, President Carter politically positioned himself as a moderate Democrat to escape the perception that Democrats were far left lunatics.  Special interest and large financial institutions then recognized that, for the first time since the great depression, both political parties could now be influenced through vast sums of money.  Thus was born the corporate Democrat. 

During the Carter Administration, deregulation of the airlines and trucking industry took hold.  It also began deregulatory reforms in banking.  Deregulation of banking opened the door to greatly increased profits made possible by investments in riskier assets financed with greater leverage — namely more borrowing.

With Carter’s success, more corporate dollars began flowing into political coffers.  This motivated succeeding Democratic candidates to jump on the deregulation bandwagon.  This eventually led to the single biggest deregulation catastrophe on November 12, 1999.  President Clinton signed the "Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act." This repealed the provision in the "Glass-Steagall Act" of 1933 that forbad the merging of financial corporate interests such as investment banks and insurance companies with commercial banks.  Clinton's single stroke of a pen created, “too big to fail.”  This, along with all the previous deregulation legislation, sent the country into the financial meltdown of 2008.

Even in the face of this economic catastrophe the juggernaut kept right on rolling.  

On January 21, 2010 the United States Supreme Court, in "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission", ruled that unlimited money could be legally spent on political campaigns.

Meanwhile President Obama offers no hope for change on this front.

President Obama’s largest campaign contributors in 2008 were AIG and the insurance industry.  In his bid for reelection we find Goldman Sachs as his largest contributor thus far.  He is also receiving money from JP Morgan Chase and Company, Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley, USB AG and, of course, AIG. 

In addition, the president had two golden opportunities to act.  The first was in crafting the 2010 Dodd–Frank legislation.  President Obama could have insisted previous provisions from Glass-Steagall be resurrected and implemented. Without breaking up the current huge conglomerates that control our financial industries and have huge influence within our government , we are left vulnerable as more of them achieve “too big to fail” status. While language addressing “too big to fail” is incorporated in "Dodd-Frank," there is absolutely nothing in the bill that prevents another 2008 financial meltdown.  

Secondly, Bernie Sanders, Independent Senator from Vermont, has proposed a Constitutional Amendment ("Saving American Democracy Amendment") to repeal the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court.  The State of The Union provided President Obama with an excellent opportunity to throw his full support behind the measure; but he chose to remain silent.

Since 1977 there have been three Republican presidents and three corporate Democratic presidents.  They are ALL duplicitous, meanwhile, business as usual continues in Washington DC.    

The Supreme Court - that hot bed of wisdom - is hardly the only court culprit.  It have lots of company.  

In the HBO documentary, “Hot Coffee” we learn that $10 million dollars is routinely spent on various individual state appellate and state Supreme Court judicial elections.  Special interests and large corporate concerns, such as tobacco companies and pharmaceutical companies, are using their money to stack these courts with judges favorable to tort reforms.  This money is funneled through the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.   Karl Rove, former campaign advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush, has been so successful in this endeavor that it is now almost impossible to get a fair civil verdict rendered in Texas.  If this abuse is left unchecked, it is estimated that as much as $100 million will soon be spent in getting tort reform judges elected.

As our liberties for redress of grievances continues to be stripped, the only remaining solution to halt the spread of these grotesque, yet legal, activities is activism.  It was activism that gave rise to labor unions; that led to Civil Rights legislation; that propelled an end to the Vietnam War; that forced the truth to surface surrounding Watergate and the despicable conduct within our government.  The “Occupy Wall Street Movement” could be considered an activist movement.  It failed because it was absent leadership and organization without any defined set of goals – no specific programs to end the stranglehold and thus no wide-ranging public support on a mandate for change.  Nevertheless, it remains, that without EFFECTIVE forms of activism to restore our democratic and legal process, we will be left with no means in addressing our grievances.     As Bill Moyers recently quipped; “…waking up to how campaign contributions corrupt our elections (and) to the fact that if speech is money – no money means no speech.”